Research Essay on Occupy Wall St.

Occupy Wall Street: The Solution to the Collapse of the Economy? In October of 2008 Congress, passed a $700 billion rescue bill to bail out, and possibly save, the doomed U.S. and global financial systems from collapsing. This decision was only a piece to the $1 trillion government plan to level off the stock market and unfreeze the credit which was needed after the collapses of the financial institutions of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual. The government also stepped in and federally took over such institutions as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together hold about $5.4 trillion in mortgage loans; 45 percent of the national total. The governmental firms were heavily burdened because of bad investments in subprime mortgages and other financial instruments. To save the banks the U.S. government dedicated about $250 billion directly into the banks to make them capable of lending to each other again. This was done so the nation’s credit crisis would be eased. As policy makers looked for new options to save the economy, experts wondered if the bailout was enough to bring back the economy speculated the bailout cost for taxpayers. They also contemplated whether this rescue idea would cause an even deeper hole in the economy. The solution to this problem from the view of the public was a protest. This protest is known as the Occupy Wall Street Movement, which started in New York City on Wall Street in the Bowling Green district (Billitteri).
According to Thomas Billitteri, a journalist with 30 years in business, before the actual bailout happened, a number of huge events caused the monumental bailout to happen. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were seized by the federal government, which promised to inject up to $100 billion into each firm as there were concerns about the cash reserves for each firm. The second issue was the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history with the investment bank of Lehman Brothers collapsing. Merrill Lynch was another issue by being bought out

Cited: Carr, David. “The Occupy Movement May Be in Retreat, but Its Ideas Are Advancing.” The NY Times, Feb 9, 2012. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. <www.mediadecodesblogs.nytimes/com/2012/02/09/the-occupy-movement-may-be-in-retreat-but-its-ideas-are-advancing/?scp=4>. Epstein, Barbara Leslie. Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s. Berkeley: University of California, 1991. Print. Haidt, Jonathan. “Reason Magazine.” Reason Magazine. Jan 2012. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. <www.reason.com/achrives/2011/12/30/the-moral-foundations-of-occupy-wall-str/singlepage>. 13 Jan. 2012. Web. 02 Mar. 2012. <http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2012011300>. Nichols John. “The 99 Percent Rise Up. The Nation.” The Nation. 12 Oct 2011. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. <www.thenation.com/article/163942/99-percent-rise>.